‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ Fingering Change

As you know, I’m doing the old fiddle tune ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ as the TTSB 30-Day Challenge (find out more at Tony Trischka School of Banjo). In working on it, there’s a part where you have to jump what is to me a long way in only the space of an eighth note. Here’s the way the piece is written, the problem is circled in red there:

That movement from the second fret to the sixth (on the third string), even with the space between, is hard for me to hit confidently. So I thought, wait a minute–is there some other place I can get the same note? Yep, there sure is. Here’s the problem measure larger:

That same third-string-sixth-fret note can be gotten on the second string at the second fret, and it’s a lot better for me to make that move instead of the long trip down to the sixth fret. Here’s how I’m going to play it:

It’s the same note, easy to hit, and easy to finger too. Ahh.

‘How can it possibly be the same note? It’s a different string!’ I hear you cry. It’s a banjo mystery 🙂 Actually, no mystery–the strings are tuned such that they overlap, that is to say they cover the same territory, and it’s possible to get the same note in several different places. With a little experimentation, you can see that the open 1st-string note (that’s a D) can be gotten at the third fret of the 2nd string, or the seventh fret of the 3rd, or the 12th fret of the 4th, and so on.